India’s Digital Divide: How Broadband Speed Splits the Nation

India ranked 67th in the world in February for download speed over fixed broadband based on the
Speedtest Global Index, with an average speed of 20.72 Mbps. But averaging across a country as large and diverse as India can mask some pretty important differences.

To get a fuller picture of fixed broadband performance on the Indian subcontinent, we’re taking a look at the average download speeds in every state and union territory that showed Speedtest results for more than 100 users in February 2018. We’re also comparing speeds in the 20 largest cities in India.

This investment in rural connectivity might be one reason that the average broadband speeds we’ve seen across India’s states and union territories don’t seem to correlate to population density. South India occupies four of the five top spots on the list of states and union territories with the fastest broadband download speeds in India, and North India holds four of the top ten. Karnataka is fastest with a mean download speed of 28.46 Mbps during the month of February, 37.4% faster than the country as a whole. Tamil Nadu is close behind at 27.94 Mbps.

On the other end of the spectrum, Northeast India accounts for four of the five slowest states and union territories we analyzed and seven of the ten slowest. Mizoram is the slowest with a mean download speed of 3.62 Mbps in February, 82.5% slower than the country as a whole. Manipur takes second-to-last place at 4.30 Mbps and Tripura barely edges into third-to-last place at 4.52 Mbps.

Which city in India has the fastest fixed broadband?

When looking at the 20 largest cities in India, Chennai is the fastest with a mean download speed over fixed broadband that’s 57.7% faster than India’s as a whole. Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam and Delhi all score above the country’s average.

The slowest of these large cities, Patna, was 62.4% slower than the country’s average for mean download speed. Nagpur, Jaipur, Kanpur, and Ahmedabad round out the bottom five. It’s also notable that the download speeds of Kanpur, Lucknow, Pune and Nagpur are significantly slower than that of their respective states.

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on the web or from our
desktop apps to show us what speeds you’re seeing.